Poker News Roundup: Taylor Black, Nicolas Dumont, Zynga Quarter

This week’s poker news hones in on a number of big winners, including two players and a company that reported a big first quarter. Here is a look at this week’s notable poker headlines:

Black Captures partypoker Live Millions Event

Taylor Black is having himself a week. The American came out on top at the partypoker Live Millions North America event, which was played at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal. There was a buy-in of $4,120 to vie for a guaranteed prize pool of over $7.7 million, resulting in a $1,093,425 purse for Black. That easily makes it the biggest win of his career.

Black was followed by fellow Americans Darryll Fish and Anthony Ruberto, who won $937,221 and $781,018, respectively. Germany’s Markus Prinz was next with $624,814 and Canada’s Charles La Boissonniere rounded out the top five with $468,610.

Black came from behind to earn the win as he started the final table second in chips behind Ruberto, whom he eventually took out. That resulted in a massive lead over Fish and eventually Black wore him down for the win. Prior to that, Black’s biggest payday was coming in second at the Colossus III at the World Series of Poker last year.

Dumont Wins EPT Monte Carlo Main Event

Speaking of big wins, France’s Nicolas Dumont is also significantly richer after the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo Main Event. The tournament had a buy-in of $6,320, which led to an $861,673 win for Dumont. That was the biggest of his career.

Dumont finished ahead of New Zealand’s Honglin Jiang, who took home $525,233. Lithuania’s Tomas Jozonis finished in third place and collected $372,746, while David Peters of the United States was next with $280,770. Krisztian Gyorgyi of Hungary rounded out the top five with $222,679.

Dumont’s previous career high in prize money was $11,664, which he won for coming in 39th at a partypoker Millions Grand Final event in Barcelona about three weeks earlier. The best part is that Dumont wasn’t even supposed to play in the tournament. His friend, Julian Perouse, was due to play but he couldn’t make it and instead offered his spot to Dumont – as long as he paid for his own accommodations. That turned out quite well for Dumont, who can now afford a room in any hotel in any city he wants.

Zynga Poker Reports Huge First Quarter

We’re already through the first quarter of 2018 and it’s been a banner few months for Zynga Poker. The company reported $162 million in online game revenue, with poker revenue of $37 million representing about 23 percent of that total. Poker revenue was up 5.7 percent year over year.

This was a somewhat important quarter for Zynga as the spotlight has been on its numbers since the company split with Facebook and partnered with the World Poker Tour. It also reported that revenue from mobile devices increased by 14 percent compared to last year, which is very impressive considering that it doesn’t work with Facebook anymore.